It was the summer of 2012 and the middle-aged mother of two was looking for someone to move her and her kids from San Rafael, Calif., to Glendale, Ariz. Money was tight, so Caplan scoured the web for an affordable but reputable moving company.

Darkness had enveloped the Newell Recycling yard by the time Erik Hilario climbed into a front-end loader on a cold evening in January 2011. Just 19 years old, Hilario, an undocumented immigrant, had followed his father from Mexico to an industrial park in East Point, Ga., near Atlanta, where they worked as low-skilled laborers amid jagged piles of scrap metal bound for the smelter.

In July 2011, a jailhouse nurse in Imperial County, Calif., found inmate Marsha Dau lying naked and dazed on the concrete floor. Charged with illegally transporting aliens, Dau, 58, recently had been exhibiting strange and aggressive behavior. For her own safety, the jail put her in an empty, beige cell with no clothes. Now, three days later, she was on her back, semi-conscious and pale.

THE SUN WAS BEATING down on Rockdale, Texas, when Donna Winkler arrived at her sister’s ranch-style, clapboard house on the afternoon of July 29, 2013. Winkler was concerned about Sherill. At the age of 54, she had lost her job as a school bus driver after falling and injuring her wrist. Her husband, Clemon Small, a former crack addict, only worked a few days a week as a karaoke DJ. Recently, the Smalls had moved from nearby Austin to Rockdale, population 5,400, to cut costs.

Sitting in the dentist’s waiting room, Patricia Dawkins didn’t suspect there was a problem until she saw the ambulance pull up, sirens blaring.

It was January 2006 and Patricia’s daughter, Katherine, was getting her wisdom teeth removed.

Just moments before, Katherine’s oral surgeon, John Choi of Irvine, had sedated her. But records show he didn’t address Katherine’s abnormally small jaw, which made her predisposed to complications under sedation and anesthesia.

The arrest that’s sent shock waves through the California Democratic Party started with a hunch.

In March of last year, a soft-spoken forensic accountant with the state Fair Political Practices Commission learned of a single, $4,500 expenditure buried in the bank statements of an unremarkable campaign account.